Japan’s controversial new law criminalising mod chips and DVD ripping has been applied for the first time, resulting in the arrest of a man for modding several Nintendo Wiis.

According to Fukuoka police, in December the 41-year-old unemployed man modded the Wii consoles of 3 men for ¥1,000 each, so as to allow them to run pirated games. In addition, he is accused of copying 5 games to their new hard-drives for ¥5,000.

The incident came to light when he rather unwisely advertised his services on Yahoo! Auctions, offering to provide Wii mods for a modest fee just after the new laws came into effect. He admits all the charges.

Although copying games was already a crime, actually modifying the consoles themselves was legal until recently, and this is the first such prosecution.

Japan’s Unfair Competition Prevention Law was revised in December to make “circumventing technological access control measures” a crime, with the law specifically targeting both console chipping and DVD ripping and carrying a maximum sentence of 3 years and 3 million yen in fines.

Private use of modified consoles is apparently still allowed, but private ripping and format shifting of copy protected material is now a crime – although as with many Japanese “crimes,” one without any fixed penalties.

As with similar laws in other countries, the principle objections raised against the law are that it criminalises format shifting of media consumers have legitimately bought, and prevents open source development of hardware incorporating copy-protection.

The law was prompted by industry complaints about damage to their sales, although why it took the government so long to finally do their bidding is not clear, as such bans and their consequences are by now very old news in a number of other countries.

You should be allowed to mod your own stuff, or have a friend do it for you. Charging for it is stupid, just have the guy get the modder a few beers.

As far as copying disks to a HDD or SSD, IT RUNS FASTER THAT WAY. Why the hell do they insist of putting them in DVDs when USB drives/cards are easier to use and don’t get scratches? Just make ones that are custom sized for the consoles!

the wii is hilariously easy to softmod. all u need is an sd card to install some software on it. It even plays games online. I played monster hunter tri that way. Its easy to do yourself even. I feel bad for the suckers who paid him for the mod.

I thought in most countries it was against their own laws to punish someone after the fact if when the crime was committed it wasn’t a crime? Because in this case the police would be in the wrong for arresting the guy for modding his and his friends Wiis since when he did it it was legal. Although that doesn’t help him with the DVD rip case…

Well that’s not capitalism, that’s corporatism and government. Capitalism= free market, in a capitalist market you can’t be touched for that stuff unless you specifically “signed” a contract with those consequences.

You see, you never actually signed a contract. What if when you bought the product and turned it on a disclaimer appears saying that you are now slaves to xxx. You had to no way of actually agreeing or disagreeing with that contract because you didn’t know of its existence. Of course you could always assume one would be there, but never knowing the contents of it before becoming a part of it. This type of thing can only be enforced in a non-free market where a group has a monopoly right to the initiation of force, and anyone would lobby to have those people on their sides (police/government/army).

man Nintendo got some strong lobbyists in Japan. First they outlaw the R4DS and now they successfully outlawed firmware hacking. I mean it’s obvious all he did was use a firmware exploit, otherwise it would have cost a lot more than a mere 10bucks. Hell, a mere $10 is a real steal. dbags on CL usually charge $30 for softmods here.

nothing new here, bro. big business rules the government and all they care about is their self. it matters no if someone is raped or killed, long as the pirates effecting their bottom dollar are persecuted to the maximum extent. hell, lax rape & murder laws benefit them because those are the only ones they’ll ever be charged with.

Oh wait, so you’re claiming that if a company suffers some kind of attack and have its information stolen for ill-intentioned criminals, the company is actually the bad one about this?
Reverse morals, how do they work?

you do realise if 80 to 90% of the peoplerip everything and never buy shit, that you will never see any news games, movies or whatever anymore or only shitty ones since there will be no more money to spend on people to make em :p

I thought in the same Japanese copyright law (similar to EU and to some extent USA) includes a rule that’s allowed to run an other operating system, which is the IOS that makes homebrew possible, with other words: it’s allowed to modify a device (i.e. software mod) to run a third party OS, or in this case a game console if it improves interoperability. But I guess the guy who mod the Wii does with mod chips? Then it’s not allowed. And copying/multiplying/modifying/uploading/spreading etc. games, i.e. software without creator’s/rightholders’ consent is always prohibited.

To be honest, I’m a bit of a goodfag and I try to support stuff I think is worth supporting, as long as I can afford it, but this bullshit about “licenses” really ticks me off.

I do understand why they would be upset about piracy, though I do think that it is overstated, but as long as you aren’t harming anyone, I don’t see the problem with ripping, altering or doing whatever else with stuff you’ve paid money for.

Before long, they’ll have it so our movies and games only work on one player, which means no sharing/trading, and we’ll have to pay for another “license” if we want to play it on another. Christ.

I doubt this is the effect of ACTA per se. Modchips for example were in most cases already illegal in the US (DMCA) and Europe (EUCP) since they allow for circumvention of the DRM on the discs (even if that isn’t their primary purpose).
It is also wrong to focus too much on one treaty (ACTA in this case) being bad when what we’re facing is a continued pressure of media lobbyists and the politicians they bought. It makes us forget the other treaties and laws that are being cooked up, the bad laws already passed that need to be struck down, and the corrupt political system that needs to change.

ofc it’s ACTA 27-5
“Each Party shall provide adequate legal protection and effective legal remedies
against the circumvention of effective technological measures14 that are used by authors,
performers or producers of phonograms in connection with the exercise of their rights in, and that restrict acts in respect of, their works, performances, and phonograms, which are not authorized by the authors, the performers or the producers of phonograms concerned or permitted by law.”

>DVD ripping and carrying a maximum sentence of 3 years and 3 million yen in fines.

Lol what? If I buy a movie, I rip it and store the ISO on one of my arrays so I can watch it on all my devices. I save the original disk and put it in storage. Having to always use the master copy is dumb.

its not that they don’t want you to rip movies off of dvds its that they want you to pay for it again for each device you use it on but they can’t just like they haven’t yet made it ilegal to sell preowned movies

What you have to realize is that girls selling themselves benefits everybody, even though it’s illegal. Their clients get the obvious benefits, the police get the benefits of easy arrests which help to finance their district, the girls benefit by having spending money, and businesses benefit when the girls buy their overpriced clothes.

Well in the US at least, we are legally allowed one copy of our purchased works last I was aware of. They may have changed that or something, but I think everyone’s forgotten about that. As long as stuff is in storage or receipts can prove purchase, then you can torrent any version of the movie you wish and quite honestly they would have no legal recourse, because technically it is still your legal second copy with which you have modified for easier viewing on your systems, nothing more. You still paid them the money they requested, so courts couldn’t really go very far with that.

so buy it original, but still pirate it, and watch only the pirate and dont even break open the plastic on the original? actually i HAVE done that witout wanting to do it with the metal gear 1-3 colecctio, and the god or war 1-2 colecction theyr there still in theyr plastic collecting dust in my cover, i played them pirated when they originally came out i was young and broke, now i have money so i bought them out of impulso only to not use them

You’r showing tremendous ignorance by trying to classify that act as a result of socialism. It’s the result of extreme capitalism hand in hand with corporatism. They succeeded in this case to actual criminalize people to modify their bought property. Which apparently isn’t bought and you don’t own to do whatever you wish with it. Its new complex era of modern feudalism, except of having a lords of the land, you have a group of corporations of the economy.

you do realize that corps just want your money, they aren’t your friends and will never be it, even if you really really wish for it in your tiny tiny forever alone heart…
KEEPING rights you have because your forefathers fought and died for them isn’t socialist, you know.

Corporation corporation blah blah blah blame everything on big corporations. As if your own failures have nothing to do with anything. Fat ass Michael Moore gives birth to a new generation of fat ass douchebags who can’t put down the fork because they blame it on big corporations and George Bush. Time travel back to the 60’s and smoke some pot you fucking pothead.

lol. filthy americans eh. why is it that the japanese have such huge inferiority complexes…
in Every anime there are women with tits the size of basketballs(bear with me) and in most hentai, the men are hung like fucking horses… us “filthy” americans have the big tits and dicks you poor little asians wish you had…. filthy.. maybe, but at least we aren’t ashamed to look in the mirror. That aside…
there’s mods for the ps2 that you copy to the memory card. after doing so you can play burnt games… dvds etc. there’s also the emulators. I can’t afford the consoles, so I emulate games i wanna play that aren’t for PC. as of yet, i haven’t had trouble with that practice.

Speaking of which, those Americans pirate everything. So many of their people are using a flash cart on their DS lite. In fact, American kids grow up expecting everything to be “free.” What a disgusting nation. No wonder the rest of the world hates them.

haha, no. Most Americans are discouraged from DS piracy because flashcards can only be purchased online. Unlike Japan, where they were sold in the same vending machines that once dispensed soiled panties.